Are cloned cave men a good idea?

Saturday

Jan 26, 2013 at 6:00 AM

George Barnes Barnestorming

The other morning I was sitting at my kitchen table doing what I am most skilled at: eating Raisin Bran and drinking coffee. After reading my morning Telegram & Gazette, I was scanning a television website when I found a story that made me exclaim, “Oh my!”

I generally reserve that kind of exuberance for the sports pages, but this story was worth not only an, “Oh my!” but also a “Holy mackerel!”

The story was that some Harvard professor was looking for an adventurous woman to serve as a surrogate mother for a Neanderthal baby.

“Oh my!”

My second reaction was, “Harvard professor? What is Elizabeth Warren up to now?”

After reading the story more thoroughly, I realized the Harvard professor was not U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., which made sense. If “Professor Warren” was involved in any way with cloning Neanderthals, I am certain the man formerly known as Sen. Scott Brown, R-Big Black Pickup Truck, would have used it against her in the election.

Reading the article, I learned that, “Oh my,” the professor was looking to extract DNA from Neanderthal fossils and using that DNA to create a living Neanderthal baby. It is probably a failure of my upbringing but I admit the idea of Neanderthals running wild in the streets, building fires, slaying mammoths and drawing pictures on the walls of caves, was intriguing.

Having survived what can best be described as a presidential election campaign that even Cro-Magnons would think was weird, having the world repopulated by Neanderthals seemed almost refreshing.

Neanderthals are described as shortish and broadish. The males were only about 5 feet 5 inches tall and weighed about as much as a professional football running back. They are believed to be either a species or subspecies that is closely related to modern human. Fossil records placed them in Europe and Asia about 30,000 years ago and they appear to be similar to cave men portrayed in GEICO television commercials.

Sadly, a few days after the story about cloning Neanderthals was aired on television, and well before mobs of angry, morally offended people with pitchforks and torches arrived in Harvard Square to attack the venerable institution, the professor in question (No, not Elizabeth Warren!) announced that reports of his cloning were greatly exaggerated. The source of the story was an interview he did for a German magazine talking about the possibility of cloning a Neanderthal from DNA found in fossils. He does not discount that it is possible, but he was not actively looking for a woman to serve as a surrogate mother.

Some had doubts from the beginning, wondering if it was realistic to think an adventurous woman could be found in Puritan Massachusetts. You’d probably have to go all the way to Connecticut to find anyone that daring.

Second, if you did successfully clone a Neanderthal child, there would be issues raising it. Intellectually, it might not be a problem. Neanderthals had more room in their skulls for brains than modern humans. You might actually see more than a few Neanderthals graduate from Harvard. Physically, there could be issues. Neanderthals were much more powerful than modern humans. If Neanderthals are cloned, when they are in high school, they would likely be excluded from sports by the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association. The MIAA tries to keep athletes safe, and club-wielding squarish people might be unacceptable. Some rule would be created.

Cave men probably will not be returning to this planet soon, but, “Oh my!” the idea that it could happen is certainly intriguing.